Eye of the Needle
In The Doctor '' |image= |series= |production=107 |producer(s)= |story=Hilary J. Bader |script=Bill Dial Jeri Taylor |director=Winrich Kolbe |imdbref=tt0708891 |guests=Vaughn Armstrong as Telek, Tom Virtue as Baxter |previous_production=The Cloud |next_production=Ex Post Facto |episode=VGR S01E07 |airdate=20 February1995 |previous_release=(VGR) The Cloud (Overall) Destiny |next_release=(VGR) Ex Post Facto (Overall) Prophet Motive |story_date(s)=48579.4 (2371/2351) |previous_story= Destiny Prophet Motive |next_story= Prophet Motive Visionary }} Summary When Ensign Kim finds a wormhole that might lead to the Alpha Quadrant, the crew believes they may have found a rapid route home. Although the opening to the tunnel in space proves too small for Voyager to fly through, Janeway decides to launch a microprobe into it to see what's on the other side. To Kim's disappointment, the probe gets stuck in a gravitational eddy before it makes it all the way through, but he's surprised by readings indicating the probe is being scanned by someone on the other side. Janeway suggests they transmit a message through the probe, hoping it will be picked up by whoever is scanning it. Before long, they receive a subspace response — from the Alpha Quadrant, 70,000 light years away! In the meantime, Kes begins working closely with the Doctor in Sickbay. She's surprised by how rudely Voyager's staff treats him because he's "only a hologram." She asks the Captain if the Doctor can be treated with the same respect as crewmembers. Janeway agrees, and tells the Doctor he should begin thinking of himself as a member of the crew. What's more, she's giving him control over his own deactivation sequence, and his first taste of independence. When Voyager finally succeeds in achieving voice contact with the Alpha Quadrant ship, they are surprised to find it's a Romulan vessel. The Romulan captain, a scientist named Telek, is suspicious of the communication from a Starfleet vessel, thinking at first that they must be Federation spies. But once they've established a visual link and the two captains can communicate eye-to-eye, Telek becomes more sympathetic to their plight, saying he'll consider relaying messages to the crew's families back home. Anxious to explore every avenue that will facilitate getting home, Torres explains that she might be able to "piggyback" a transporter beam onto the visual link, which theoretically would allow the crew to beam to the Romulan ship in the Alpha Quadrant. To test the theory, the Romulan captain allows himself to be transported onto Voyager. Regrettably, Tuvok discovers the crew has actually beamed the Romulan from 20 years in the past, due to a time rift in the wormhole. Knowing it's pointless to transport the crew back in time because it would wreak havoc with the timeline of that era, Janeway asks the Romulan to relay the crew's messages to their families in 20 years. He agrees, and returns to his ship. Later, a database check reveals that the Romulan died four years before he was able to deliver the messages. Although disappointed, the crew presses forward. Errors and Explanations Internet Movie Database Trivia # Mor's native time, 2351, places him in a time before the TNG episode The Neutral Zone, which is set in 2364. In that episode, it is claimed that the Federation had not had contact with the Romulans in almost 54 years. The claim in the TNG episode refers to official Governmental contact – the contact in this episode may have been classified. Nit Central # Chris Thomas on Saturday, December 26, 1998 - 9:29 pm: Okay, the premise of this is they discover a small wormhole that leads 20 years into the past. They then communicate with a Romulan. Now, in The Neutral Zone, there had been no contact with the Romulans for 50 or so years. Don't you think there should have been some more suspicion on the Romulan's part? His initial reaction, thinking them to be spies, would have probably caused him to break off communication. Maybe he is secretly an advocate of reformation? # Keith Alan Morgan on Saturday, April 24, 1999 - 8:02 am: The viewscreen shows the wormhole, but usually in Star Trek, wormholes are only seen when they are opening or closing. This is no ordinary wormhole. # Tuvok says that the signal comes from the Alpha Quadrant. First, how does he know it's the Alpha quadrant? In addition, the Romulan said he studied the signal and it does seem to originate in the Delta Quadrant. What it is about the signal that would tell someone what quadrant it originated in? All the extra little numbers in the Romulan's Caller ID? Perhaps the transmission carrier wave includes the sender’s spatial coordinates. # The signal reaches a Romulan and according to the official maps Romulan space is in the Beta quadrant. (Although maybe the Romulans consider their own quadrant Alpha?) He could be in the part of the Alpha Quadrant located between inhabited space and the galactic core. # Amazingly, two ships on opposite sides of the Galaxy keep the same time, both the Romulan and Janeway say "Goodnight" to each other and we did see Janeway woken up just before the call. Merat on Thursday, September 15, 2005 - 10:28 pm: Kim probably told the Romulan captain that he needed to hold since the captain was asleep. # Kes asks if the Doctor's program can be downloaded and he says that his program cannot be downloaded, but apparently the Doctor was wrong as his program will be downloaded to the Holodeck in Heroes and Demons, down to Starling's office in Future's End Part 1, into the mobile emitter starting with Future's End Part 2 and finally downloaded halfway across the galaxy over an alien relay network to the Prometheus in Message in a Bottle. Charles Cabe (Ccabe) on Saturday, April 24, 1999 - 10:55 am: I think it was experimental to download the Doctor in Heroes and Demons. ("Heroes" came latter, right?) Also, isn't the Doctor a bit like a band-aid trying to fill in for a cast for a broken bone? So, it's possible he doesn't know all his limitations, or is just plain wrong about them. Mike Konczewski on Monday, April 26, 1999 - 2:03 pm: I think it's eventually established that B'Lanna does a lot of tinkering with the holo-emitters and the EMH. This could be why Voyager later develops the ability to download the Doctor. Of course, by the time they get the mobile emitter, they can definitely download the program. # Torres says they are locked onto the Romulan's coordinates. How? The Romulan's true position is some 75,000 light years away, not even close to the transporter's range. Maybe the wormhole is giving a false impression to the sensors making the ship's computer think the Romulan is within range, but wouldn't this be like saying that the newscasters on the TV are in the same room as the viewers? Merat on Thursday, September 15, 2005 - 10:28 pm: The Romulan's true position may be 75,000 lightyears away from Voyager, but there is a shortcut in space between the two of them. The distance between them is actually the length of the wormhole, and with the microprobe acting as a relay, they were able to scan and lock onto the Romulan's coordinates. # Since Torres is having such trouble balancing the phase variance with each transport, doesn't this mean that at least one person would have to stay behind if the crew did beam back? Tricorder on Wednesday, March 07, 2001 - 11:27 pm: I also have an anti-nit for something KAM wrote way back on April 24, 1999. He says one person would have had to stay behind to beam everyone through the phase variance, but I think the Romulan transporters could have been used to pull the last person through. KAM on Thursday, March 08, 2001- 3:12 am: was surprised at how advanced Voyager's transporters were. Although, I suppose B'Elanna could have brought along some spare parts & tried to upgrade the Romulan transporters. Another anti-nit is that they could just leave Neelix & Kes behind. However wouldn't leaving the ship behind violate the Prime Directive as its technology could potentially change the balance of power for a number of races. ScottN on Thursday, March 08, 2001 - 9:35 am: Set the transporter for 10 second delay, hit the button and run on to the pad. Or do a site to site from the transporter console. Tricorder on Thursday, March 08, 2001 - 11:08 pm: KAM, I like your idea of having Neelix and Kes beam the last person through the wormhole better than mine. I always imagined if the Voyager crew had found some way home that would have required them to leave the ship, that Janeway would have the ship scuttled to prevent Federation technology from influencing the Delta Quadrant. Sorry, ScottN, your idea doesn't fly here. The problem is Torres made manual changes during the transport to get the Romulan through. An automatic transport sequence wouldn't be able to make the adjustments. ScottN on Thursday, March 08, 2001 - 11:13 pm: Add holoemitters to the transporter room. Have the EMH beam them through, since they were going to leave him anyways. ' # ''Q on Tuesday, December 21, 1999 - 9:30 pm: Janeway says that there is a one-in-four chance that the wormhole leads to the Alpha Quadrant. That's actually a one-in-five chance. Our galaxy isn't the only one in the universe, and what about intergalactic space? '''The wormhole may not be able to traverse the space between galaxies. # Tricorder on Wednesday, March 07, 2001 - 11:27 pm: I missed some of the early stuff in this episode when it aired tonight, but I still have a nit: Janeway says to the Romulan, "Welcome to the Delta Quadrant ... Captain." I thought Romulans didn't use the rank of captain. The equivalent is commander, then the equivalent of a Federation full commander is sub-commander. I'll go ahead and write my own anti-nit (even though I don't totally buy it). It was later revealed that the Romulan was not in the military, so he might not have had an official rank anyway. In either case, Janeway called him "captain" as a courtesy to the commanding officer of another ship. # constanze on Tuesday, June 08, 2004 - 5:43 am: All the time Janeway is trying to convince the Romulan to get an allowance from the Romulan Senate to pass on the messages to Starfleet, she mentions how soon the probe will collapse. Why not send the messages first to the Romulan? If the Senate doesn't give the ok., he can still delete them. I wonder how peeved of the Romulan Senate felt: first, this mere captain of a science vessel tries to hurry them with stories of a Starfleet ship in the Delta quad., then a few hours later he calls the Senate to say "Sorry guys, false alarm." (Or did he say "Sorry guys, this all happened in the future?"). Was his death maybe a ritual suicide over embarrassment/ dishonourment? LUIGI NOVI on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 10:11 pm: Constanze, he could've died in a battle, or an accident relating to his line of work, like a delta ray leak or reactor explosion, or something. # Wasn't his death premature, since Romulans are related to the Vulcans, a long-lived species, and the Romulan didn't look too old or sick? Mark Swinton on Wednesday, January 19, 2005 - 2:38 pm: When I first saw this, I felt that the scene when they beam the Romulan back was made into quite a tense moment by the unusual length of the beam-out procedure, coupled with Torres having to do some unusual tinkering at the console and some dramatic music going on in the background. Then, when Tuvok announced that the Romulan had died four years prior to their present timeline, I half-wondered if this transport through the micro-wormhole had had adverse effects that finally caught up with him... # I wonder if the Romulan told his little daughter the whole story and made her pass the data on. That could be how the Romulan government found out about them, which would explain their interest in Voyager, as mentioned during the events of Inside Man. Category:Episodes Category:Voyager